Either Way
by stretchingthelimits
Summary: There are things that Shepard never wanted to share, and her nightmares are one of them. But once Garrus finds out about them by experiencing them firsthand, she discovers that maybe having someone in her corner to help fight them isn't so bad.


AN: This was written in an old notebook at work. I will probably be revising a little more, I just wanted to post it tonight to get it done.

The scream tore out of her throat before Shepard even realized that she was awake.

She was shaking. She belatedly realized that her arms were moving, still trying to push away the flames, trying to stifle the fire that was never real. The little boy had been gone for months.

Something shifted behind her and around her waist, and she jumped again until she heard Garrus' soft trill; a sound she never realized—never imagined—could be so comforting until recently.

She'd only convinced him that he was not only welcome in her quarters, but sorely wanted once she had found him on Menae and brought him—completely willingly of course—onto the Normandy with her.

"You wouldn't wake up this time." He murmured into the back of her neck as he pulled her closer, folding her to rest in his arms. "Same dream?"

She shook her head, she was still shaking, breath still racing. This dream unsettled her more than the regular one. Her death by spacing usually caused her nightmares, and she would awake panting and gasping; something her bedmate discovered alarmingly early in his residence in her cabin. On only the second night she had awoken him by crying out and thrashing.

He had been more than alarmed, and the way his eyes had lit on her in the dark room, so full of concern and care—for her—that she had broken down in tears. The tears were an extreme rarity for her.

He had asked her over and over what he could do—

"Shepard—Virginia, tell me what I can do? How can I help?" His talons are gentle but frantic as they trace her arms, back, tangle in her hair. He clearly has more experience dealing with panic and fear—and tears—than she anticipated. He's whispering that it will be okay, that nothing's going to happen, that he's got her, just as much as he's asking—begging—what can he do to make it stop.

As much as the words themselves are fairly standard fare for tears and nightmares in all of their forms, what breaks Shepard's heart that night is the earnestness behind them. He sounds more panicked that she's ever heard him, and she can't blame him but so much.

Even knowing as well as he does all of the demons she's face, the troubles she carries, also knowing as he now does—as inescapeably as he now does—that it is this close to breaking her, to taking her down…

She can't blame his panic. She feels it too, feels it in the faces looking carefully to her—brightly to her.

Commander Shepard—the best hope for the living, the face of the battle against the reapers, savior of the galaxy (potentially), the Hero of Elysium. She's fought reapers, ended generations-long feuds, brought species together. Shepard will be able to save everyone again, right?

As much as she trusts her crew and gives them the grace of her honesty about their chances, where they stand, they are sometimes the worst about it. They build her up the most, hold her the highest. There are times that they are too loyal. Yet they know her best. Garrus knows her best, and Liara and tali, the _know _that she is nothing but human—implanted but human. Doggedly determined, but still human. Mortal.

She's just another person, in the right place at the right time, and still they place this trust in her—their terrifying trust—to not fail them.

And she has become so tired.

"Garrus—" even as she calms her tears enough to speak, she cuts herself off again with another choking sob. She realizes logically that she will make herself sick if she doesn't stop—but she suddenly needs to fonfess this to him.

"Garrus," She begins again, "I'm so tired."

He takes a minute to absorb this, watching her, and she realizes that he's making a sound in his chest—the second larynx, he'd explained before—and his browplates are drawn together.

"I'm so tired and I can't stop. I can't sleep for reliving the Normandy going down." She is suddenly able to keep talking through the tears that threaten to close her throat. "I'm going down, and I can't stop. I can't stop or that will be… will be it. We'll all die, Garrus, and I won't have you anymore. There's nothing there when you're dead, and I haven't had enough time—I don't think I'll ever have enough—not enough time with you." She was sobbing still, but now his hands were cupping her cheeks, smoothing through her hair.

"Shep—Virginia—"

"Ginny. I'm just Ginny, Garrus."

"Ginny." He presses his forehead to hers, his breath cooling over the tears coating her face, cooling her burning eyes. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Don't."

"I'm not."

"Okay."

"Does that help."

"Yeah." She responds. She realizes that they're both sitting up in bed, that her hands are locked onto his knees. "You always help, Garrus."

"Oh, Ginny." He breathes against her face a few more times. Brushes his mouth plates against her wet cheeks in the gentle turian kiss he's developed for her. Uses his thumbs to dry her face further.

She realizes that she's not crying anymore. She's just breathing shakily, staring with her eyes locked on his, shining bright blue in the dark room, she can't let her eyes off of his, his eyes that have been her lifeline for years now.

"I'm sorry Garrus." She sighs, apologizing for waking him up. They've both been needing the sleep since the reapers hit, but something made him frown. He brushed his mouth against hers. Shook his head, dropping their eye contact.

"Shit, Shepard." He ran a hand over the back of his fringe in the gesture that told her that he thought he had messed up somehow; that he was going to blame himself for something.

"I'm sorry." He breath hitched again with unshed tears when he spoke. "I've been at your six for a long time, at your side for even longer." She nodded, smiling a little… despite the fact that this hurt for some reason. "I've been watching your back for…as long as I care to remember. I don't like to remember myself… before you. I don't like to think too much about who I was… before you believed in me." She grasped his hands, feeling her sobs coming back again now. "I'm pretty sure this is more than… than we've said it is so far. We're not just sleeping together, and I'm not just warming your bed here, and I'm not just filling out your ground team. I'm—Spirits, Shepard." The way he said her name, she was sure that he would be crying himself if he were human, if it were a response he could muster. He would have been crying those thick, throat-closing tears that build up but refuse to fall…

And that's when she realized that the noise, the thrumming deep in his chest had started again.

Her heart opened up a little more as she realized that she would learn him completely if she yet had the chance.

"Please don't hide this kind of thing from me, Shepard. Ginny. I want to help you… any way I can. I want to, I owe you, and if there's anything you need, anything." He shook his head, pressed his brow back to hers. "I'm here. Just. Please don't hide from me."

"Okay. I have nightmares still." He nodded.

"The attack?" He asked.

"Yeah, some of it is the ship going down, but most if it is… not." As much as she was much calmer and feeling like she just wanted to curl into Garrus' chest, the residual adrenaline from the dream was making her legs tingle and itch. She kissed him, and crawled out of bed, trying to ignore the way her knee and hip rebelled against her commands to move as she pulled herself to standing. That was happening more and more lately, despite all of her implants and the physical therapy Chakwas has prescribed.

"Lights." She commanded. As they came up, she went to the cabinet with her wine glasses and the few bottles she still had. Garrus followed her and ended up taking the glass from her as she tried to uncork the bottle with shaking hands. He ended up taking the bottle from her too, and pouring each of them a glass. She stood and forced herself to sip it rather than gulp it.

"Would water be better?" Garrus asked. He was standing awfully close. She shook her head.

"I want something to calm me down." She answered.

"We can get Chakwas to give you something?" He offered. She almost laughed.

"No, it's okay. Believe it or not this happens a lot." He nodded mutely. He sat down and pulled her forward so that his head rested against her stomach, and ran his talons across the backs of her legs.

"Why didn't you tell me?" He asked, speaking into her sleep shirt. She ran her hands over the tough, smooth hide at the back of his neck, letting her fingers feel out the little bumps of plating there.

"Didn't want to worry you. They've been happening ever since I… woke up. I think I've been getting used to them."

"I don't want you to be used to them." He said, looking up at her. "I don't want you to be used to nightmares every night."

"It's not every night." She said, as placatingly as possible.

"Shepard."

"Okay." She nodded. He didn't like her being this upset. He didn't like her not being okay. She could understand that. She could respect it; she was almost frantic when she pulled him out of Omega. Even when he was back on his feet and cracking jokes—darker, more cynical jokes than before, she followed him around, pushing him, inquiring about him, monitoring him. He didn't want to let her help either, but they hadn't been… involved then. "Okay, Garrus."

"Will you talk to someone? Chakwas?" He asked, pulling her down to sit with him on the sofa. She curled into his lap and he wrapped his arms around her. She nodded. "Will you tell me?" She nodded.

"I've told you I remember it, right?" It was his turn to nod, and she continued. "The one dream is always the same, the ship rocks with this blast, the decompression alarm goes off, and I run up to the escape pods, I always remember grabbing my helmet. Kaidan and I get most of the non-combat crew loaded in to the pods and sent off, but someone tells me that Joker's still in the cockpit, that he won't leave, so I go up there. There's no atmo in the CIC, the galaxy map is fucked, glitching all over the place, and I can see… I can see space through these holes in my ship. My fucking ship, there's debris everywhere, the gravity fields aren't working right so it's just floating, and it's my ship that's destroyed. But I get Joker up and loaded into a pod… and then there's this explosion. The gravity shuts off, and I get thrown off the decks before the mags kick in in my boots. And I'm falling… flying… whatever, and a piece of the ship hits me in the back of the head, knocks a hole in my O2 supply. And it's… sickening. It's glorious, but it's fucking horrible, because I'm flying, I'm free and it's brilliant. I used to love zero-gee ops, used to love freefall, but now it's because my ship is destroyed, and I'm free because the last escape pod is gone, and my air is venting out and this is going to be it."

Garrus didn't respond, just kept holding her. He probably didn't know what to say. What do you say when you find out someone you care about has nightmares about their own death?

"So that's the usual one, and I just wake up and I can't breathe."

"There's another nightmare?" He asked, and she could hear the slight tremor in his voice, could hear the way his subvocals were a little too strong.

"I've only had it once. During the attack on earth, there was this little boy who I tried to help. He ran away from me. In the dream I'm chasing him through this… forest, and I can't catch him, can't catch him before he catches fire. I couldn't save him in the dream either."

"You've saved so many, though." He seemed to be pleading with her. "You've saved everyone on this ship."

"I don't want to talk about that, Garrus." As much as her emotional walls were weak right now, she knew that she was not lowering that boundary tonight. Not yet. Not when she could still hear his voice telling her that she couldn't save them all. Not when she could still see his sad, honest eyes as the flames ate him up.

"Okay." He leaves it exactly as she prays that he will. "Okay."

They finish the wine and he eventually coaxes her back to bed. She's skeptical, because while she was captive in Vancouver she got used to just getting up and doing exercises or reading or doing anything she could to avoid sleeping again, but that night, she falls back asleep tucked in between his heavy limbs.

Now, he's still not okay with her nightmares, but he they don't rock his mind as they did at first. Now they have a routine, as much for her as for him, they've discovered.

They both want to be woken up from their nightmares.

They'll always tell what the nightmare was.

And then they'll always help each other back to sleep.

Garrus had insisted on the last part more and more as time went on. Shepard had learned to deal with her nightmares by avoiding the sleep that allowed them in, which had been one thing while she was a prisoner of the Alliance, but now that they were—she was—facing more crises on a daily basis than anyone had any call to deal with, Garrus had pulled the boyfriend card, and confronted her with her body's need to sleep. It had taken Chakwas' quiet reasoning and calm nature in addition to Garrus' own promises that he would always be there to convince Shepard that she had to sleep at least six hours for every twenty-eight, regardless of nightmares. Chakwas had threatened the inevitable shutdown of her body and mind; Garrus had just assured her he would drug her.

Shepard had cried, cursed them, agreed to their demands, and thanked them tearfully for caring about her. When he had noticed Chakwas' own misty eyes, he had escorted Shepard off to a nap to get a start on the six/twenty-eight promise.

Tonight, though, Garrus didn't ask what he could do to help; he just asked which dream it was.

"The little boy." She gasped. She relaxed into his grip. "This time there were voices. Ashley, Mordin."

"What did they say?" He asked.

"Nothing I could understand. They said my name." She hated this dream. It made her afraid, and she hated that feeling.

Garrus trilled against her shoulder, and she rolled to face him, wrapping her arms around his neck inside his cowl.

"This will be over soon, right?" She asked him. She didn't like how small her voice sounded. Didn't like how close to tears she felt. She was crying entirely too much lately. Crying too much with Garrus. "One way or another?" She asked.

He grasped her tighter.

"Yeah, it'll be over soon." His own voice caught. It was clear she wasn't the only one terrified by their odds, by what they had to face. "But Ginny?" He kissed her, "We'll be right there together, either way."


End file.
